Heidelberg 2015 – scientific programme
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A: Fachverband Atomphysik
A 42: Ultracold Plasmas and Rydberg Systems III (with Q)
A 42.3: Talk
Friday, March 27, 2015, 11:30–11:45, P/H2
Excitation Energy Transfer in Ultra-Cold Rydberg Gase — •Torsten Scholak1,2, Thomas Wellens2, and Andreas Buchleitner2,3 — 1Department of Chemistry, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada M5S 3H6 — 2Physikalisches Institut der Albert-Ludwigs-Universität, Hermann-Herder-Str. 3, D-79104 Freiburg, Germany — 3Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies, Albert-Ludwigs-Universität, Albertstr. 19, D-79104 Freiburg, Germany
Ultra-cold gases of Rydberg atoms are one of the few many-body systems with tunable long-range interactions. This feature, along with their exceptional static and dynamic properties, as well as their versatility, has propelled them into the limelight. Now, with the advent of novel imaging methods capable of non-destructive monitoring of Rydberg excitations, Rydberg gases become an ideal testbed and a proving ground for theories of energy transport in complex systems, in particular, frustrated spin glasses, nitrogen-vacancy centers, and photosynthetic light-harvesting complexes. In this talk, we reveal how the nature of excitation energy transfer (EET) in the gas can be controlled via the dipole blockade effect [1]. For weak blockade, we predict transient localization of EET on small clusters of two or more atoms. For stronger blockade, EET will be significantly faster, because the excitations are efficiently migrated by delocalized states. We present our analysis of the ensemble-averaged mean-square displacement ⟨[r(t) − r(0)]2⟩ and a thorough study of the spatial distribution of the system’s eigenstates.
[1] T. Scholak, T. Wellens, and A. Buchleitner, Phys. Rev. A , in press (2014), arXiv:1409.5625.